What went wrong for Mugabe? Most aging dictators don’t get toppled by coups.

What went wrong for Mugabe? Most aging dictators don’t get toppled by coups.2017-11-222017-11-22http://www.worldusnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/logo.pngWorld & US Newshttp://www.worldusnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AFP_UI0N2.jpg200px200px

People gather outside Harare’s airport to welcome former Zimbabwean vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa on Nov. 22, in Harare. Mnangagwa, 75, was sacked by President Robert Mugabe on Nov. 6, infuriating army chiefs and triggering events that led to Mugabe’s ouster. (Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty Images)

After 37 years in office, Robert Mugabe’s odds of being removed from power by members of his ruling circle in Zimbabwe were slim. Research on authoritarianism suggests the 93-year-old president was well-positioned to live out his final days in office and join the ranks of the 80 post-World War II dictators who have died in office of natural causes.

The longer a dictator rules, the less likely he is to be toppled in a coup — that’s what history reveals. While concerns about succession loomed large in Zimbabwe, data show that older leaders (ages 65 and up) are at lower risk of losing power in a coup than are their younger despotic counterparts.

[When ailing dictators die in office, what happens next?]

Another factor should have worked in Mugabe’s favor: the regime’s revolutionary origins. The shared experience of fighting against the white Rhodesian settler state in the 1960s and 1970s created a particularly strong bond between the civilian leaders of the Zimbabwe African National Union and the Zimbabwe Defense Forces.

Research shows that dictatorships borne out of such revolutionary struggles are exceptionally durable, because they are highly resistant to coups: Leaders of such revolutionary regimes rarely are overthrown by their own militaries. This shared revolutionary experience should have inoculated Mugabe from the military’s intervention.

What went wrong for Mugabe?

In short, he miscalculated. His decision to fire powerful vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa to position his wife’s succession violated two classic rules of authoritarian survival.

First, Mugabe’s moves to promote his wife, Grace Mugabe, upset the revolutionary values that underpinned his hold on power. Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, Zimbabwe’s army chief, made this breach explicit when he warned, “We must remind those behind the current treacherous shenanigans that when it comes to matters of protecting our revolution, the military will not hesitate to step in.” By purging a co-revolutionary in favor of his wife, Mugabe incited the armed forces to act.

Mugabe’s second mistake was thinking that he could orchestrate his wife’s accession to power. Since World War II, spouses have seldom succeeded their autocratic husbands. (One example might be Simone Duvalier’s custodial rule during the early years of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s presidency in Haiti, but the reality is that spousal takeovers are rare in dictatorships).

[To understand the coup in Zimbabwe, you need to know more about Grace Mugabe]

Efforts to install other family members as successors also set autocrats up to fall. The fate of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak illustrates this well. While hereditary successions do occur in autocracies, they tend to be successful only in monarchies or places where dictators have created their own political party, such as in Azerbaijan or Togo. By contrast, where parties predate a leader, elites are frequently able to override a ruler’s nepotistic succession selections.

Mugabe’s missteps ultimately led the military to intervene

Although the generals did not forcibly remove Mugabe from power, their actions were the crucial catalyst for his resignation. In autocracies, particularly highly repressive ones, information is scare. High levels of repression make it costly for citizens to express genuine opinions or display discontent.

This leads most people to overestimate the regime’s level of support, which disincentivizes anti-regime behavior. In other words, individuals are willing to act only if they believe that a sufficient number of their fellow citizens will do the same. The military’s moves, therefore, gave a signal of dissatisfaction that set off an “information cascade,” changing the decision calculus of the Zimbabwean elite about their willingness to remain acquiescent to Mugabe.